A MAN’S LETTER—UNSATISFACTORY AND PROVOKING AS A MAN’S LETTERS ALWAYS ARE.
GUY DARRELL To COLONEL MORLEY.
Fawley Manor-House, August 11, 18—. I HAVE decided, my dear Alban. I did not take three days to do so, though the third day may be just over ere you learn my decision. I shall never marry again: I abandon that last dream of declining years. My object in returning to the London world was to try whether I could not find, amongst the fairest and most attractive women that the world produces—at least to an English eye—some one who could inspire me with that singleness of affection which could alone justify the hope that I might win in return a wife’s esteem and a contented home. That object is now finally relinquished, and with it all idea of resuming the life of cities. I might have re-entered a political career, had I first secured to myself a mind sufficiently serene and healthful for duties that need the concentration of thought and desire. Such a state of mind I cannot secure. I have striven for it; I am baffled. It is said that politics are a jealous mistress—that they require the whole man. The saying is not invariably true in the application it commonly receives—that is, a politician may have some other employment of intellect, which rather enlarges his powers than distracts their political uses. Successful politicians have united with great parliamentary toil and triumph legal occupations or learned studies. But politics do require that the heart should be free, and at peace from all more absorbing private anxieties—from the gnawing of a memory or a care, which dulls ambition and paralyses energy. In this sense politics do require the whole man. If I return to politics now, I should fail to them, and they to me. I feel that the brief interval between me and the grave has need of repose: I find that repose here. I have therefore given the necessary orders to dismiss the pompous retinue which I left behind me, and instructed my agent to sell my London house for whatever it may fetch. I was unwilling to sell it before—unwilling to abandon the hope, however faint, that I might yet regain strength for action. But the very struggle to obtain such strength leaves me exhausted more.
You may believe that it is not without a pang, less of pride than of remorse, that I resign unfulfilled the object towards which all my earlier life was so resolutely shaped. The house I promised my father to re-found dies to dust in my grave. To my father’s blood no heir to my wealth can trace. Yet it is a consolation to think that Lionel Haughton is one on whom my father would have smiled approvingly. At my death, therefore, at least the old name will not die; Lionel Haughton will take and be worthy to bear it. Strange weakness of mine, you will say; but I cannot endure the thought that the old name should be quite blotted out of the land. I trust that Lionel may early form a suitable and happy marriage. Sure that he will not choose ignobly, I impose no fetters on his choice.
One word only on that hateful subject, confided so tardily to your friendship, left so thankfully to your discretion. Now that I have once more buried myself in Fawley, it is very unlikely that the man it pains me to name will seek me here. If he does, he cannot molest me as if I were in the London world. Continue, then, I pray you, to leave him alone. And, in adopting your own shrewd belief, that after all there is no such child as he pretends to claim, my mind becomes tranquillised on all that part of my private griefs.
Farewell, old school-friend! Here, so far as I can foretell—here, where my life began, it returns, when Heaven pleases, to close. Here I could not ask you to visit me: what is rest to me would be loss of time to you. But in my late and vain attempt to re-enter that existence in which you have calmly and wisely gathered round yourself, “all that should accompany old age-honour, love, obedience, troops of friends”—nothing so repaid the effort—nothing now so pleasantly remains to recollection—as the brief renewal of that easy commune which men like me never know, save with those whose laughter brings back to them a gale from the old playground. “Vive, vale;” I will not add, “Sis memor mei.” So many my obligations to your kindness, that you will be forced to remember me whenever you recall the not “painful subjects” of early friendship and lasting gratitude. Recall only those when reminded of GUY DARRELL.
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